Transport is one of the most stressful experiences in a farmed pig's life. Understanding the welfare impacts and how to minimise them is essential for ethical production.
Transport represents a welfare-critical point in the lives of farmed pigs because it combines multiple stressors simultaneously: social disruption through mixing with unfamiliar animals, unfamiliar environment, motion, noise, temperature variation, and inability to control any aspect of the experience. Research shows clear evidence of fear, physiological stress, and social aggression during mixing and transport. The welfare impact is compounded by the fact that transport often occurs at the end of a production cycle when animals may already be compromised. Producer incentives for transport welfare are partly economic — stress-related meat quality problems (pale, soft, exudative pork) create financial motivation for better transport practices — but welfare investment should not depend solely on economic alignment.